Saturday, 2 November 2013

Scenario: You are heading to London to spend the afternoon
with some friends. On arrival at the train station, you are met with a huge
queue and a distinct lack of time to buy your ticket and get on the right
train. After what seems like an age, you make it to the front and ask for a
return to Euston. You are shocked when the ticket lady presents you with your
options:

Option A: Off peak return and underground travel card for
£31. Your return must be before 16:13 (too early) or after 19:00 (not practical
for being picked up from the station at the end of the day and might not fit in
with your friends’ plans).

The queue behind you has grown, the ticket lady is impatient
and you wonder if you can hear your train pulling into the station. You have
approximately 3 seconds to decide what to do. Which option do you go for?

I opted for B.

When I told my friend about this over lunch, her jaw dropped
to the floor and that is when I realised that it had perhaps been a dodgy
choice. I was a tad embarrassed but at the same time refused to accept that
this was my fault. A capacity for making such questionable financial decisions
is ingrained in my genes. I could draw on many a tale to prove my point. Here
is just one:

One year, for some reason, I thought that having mice for my
birthday present was a good idea. Perhaps because they’d be, you know, kind of…
well I suppose, a bit… interesting? In hindsight, I think I preferred the idea
of owning mice rather than the reality. It would be cool. I would be cool.
I’d be like that Spinelli kid on Recess. She
was cool.The parents were vehemently against the idea but eventually
succumbed to my incredible powers of persuasion. However, as we arrived at the
garden centre, it all became a bit too real and my confidence in the idea
started to wane. I didn’t let on though. I’d done A LOT of persuasive
groundwork to get to this stage so I felt a need to remain committed to the
plan.

In Pet Corner, the effort to hide my concern was ramped up
when I locked eyes on the vermin for the first time. They were scrabbling and
scratching around in their tanks and couldn’t have looked less pet-like had
they tried. I realised that I actually really didn’t want mice but also didn’t
want to lose face and admit I’d been wrong in the numerous, lengthy and heated
negotiations with the parents to get to this point. The pressure to commit had
become intense so when the shop assistant took off the tank lid and half of the
crazed bastards escaped, I couldn’t have been more grateful; this was my get
out clause! It was a bad idea to buy mice because if they escaped nobody else
would be able to cope. We swiftly exited the shop and nothing more was said.

The parents were quietly smug and annoyingly chirrupy
getting into the car. I bit my tongue. I must say, I can now sympathise with their point of
view; if I’d not long ago had to lay down mice traps to catch a rodent who’d
decided to take up home behind the piano, I probably wouldn’t have been willing
to spend money on buying another. So then,
high on the relief that they were relieved of the mice burden (let’s be honest,
I would have lost interest after a day and never cleaned them out), the
parents went AWOL and made one hell of an impulse purchase – they bought a car.
A CAR.

I therefore shift the blame for today’s poor financial
decision making onto them. The buck stops with my genes.